Say what you will about the computer geeks and others who have plunged us into a new world of online stores, social media and other contrivances large and small, but they did it, often with roaring success.

That’s because they came up with an idea and, through long hours of hard work, made it a reality. Sometimes the ideas caught on, and other times failure sent them back to the drawing board.

The process cultivates American ingenuity at its finest.

Last week, Capital Press reporter Carol Ryan Dumas interviewed one of these pioneers, Tobias Peggs.

Instead of having a goal of selling widgets online, however, Peggs and his business partner, Kimbal Musk, have another goal: feeding people.

We can think of no higher aspiration. Though the “Chicken Littles” are out in force, predicting the worst case scenario for the world in areas such as climate, overpopulation and diminished resources, food will always be a bright spot.

The reason, of course, is we’ve been there before. Many of us with a little gray hair will remember the “Population Explosion” that was presented by many pessimists as the prelude to the end of the world as we know it.

The Jan. 11, 1960, Time magazine described this supposed explosion. It was to be “as fateful to history as the H-bomb and the Sputnik.”

The magazine — and all of the others who drank the Flavor Aid of over population — were wrong.

Why? Because of science. Those men and women in laboratory coats came through with a series of discoveries that came to be known as the Green Revolution. Led by Nobel laureate Norman Borlaugh, scientists led the charge to develop seeds that allowed farmers to multiply their crop yields through breeding and nitrogen fertilization. The procession of developments continues today.

This revolution reduced world hunger by half, and opened the doors to a new era: the Agriculture of Hope.

We don’t often find ourselves agreeing with folks like Bill Gates, but we do agree with what he said about Borlaugh.

“Dr. Borlaug is proof that large-scale progress is possible. He is a genuine hero, and his story should make us optimistic about the future,” the Microsoft co-founder wrote.

Enter more agricultural pioneers like Peggs, who see as their mission developing crops that can be grown indoors without massive expenditures for artificial light. Accomplished through gene-editing and innovation, this would multiply the amount of food that can be grown anywhere in the world, preferably where the people who need it are.

Other innovators continue to enter the ranks of pioneers. A few weeks ago, we wrote about a California company that has developed a way to produce nitrogen fertilizer from the atmosphere, which is mostly made up of that gas.

These developments represent just the tiniest tip of the iceberg of innovation that is part of the Agriculture of Hope.

Through the efforts of these and thousands of other scientists across the planet, working in land-grant universities, government laboratories and private businesses, humankind will be able to feed itself, now and forever.